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Frederick A. Stokes Company, [No date: circa 1936]. Hardcover, xvi + 240 pp.; 19 cm; Second Edition (with Author's Preface to the Second Edition dated London, January 1936; sheets printed in Great Britain by Billing and Sons Ltd., Guildford and Esher, and bound for Stokes for the United States market); illustrated with 24 plates of Chinese paintings, including the Portrait of Confucius by Ma Yuan (Sung) as frontispiece.
In Acceptable condition, no dust jacket. Orange cloth-covered boards lettered in black with the Chinese title characters on the front and "THE CHINESE EYE / CHIANG YEE / STOKES" on the spine; spine cloth toned and sunned, with fraying and nicking at the head and tail and along the corner tips; slits to the cloth along the front and rear hinges at the head; moderate to heavy shelf wear overall, with bumping and creasing to edges and corners and moderate soiling and spotting to the covers. Slit cracking to the paper at the rear hinge. Binding tight. Previous owner's ink signature on the front free endpaper. Previous owner's extensive pencil study notes on the rear free endpaper (both sides) and rear pastedown, listing some sixty Chinese painters organized by dynasty (Han through Ch'ing, plus contemporary names). Pages moderately toned but otherwise unmarked, with occasional foxing through the text and heavier foxing and spotting to the endpapers and the title-page leaf.Chiang Yee (1903-1977), the Chinese-born British author best known for his Silent Traveller travel books, wrote The Chinese Eye in connection with the International Exhibition of Chinese Art at Burlington House, London, 1935-36. Intended for a Western readership, it offers a sustained interpretation of Chinese painting from inside the tradition, covering its history, its philosophical and literary grounding, its subjects, materials, and techniques. The Methuen first edition appeared in 1935; this Second Edition (Methuen 1936) was issued in the United States by Frederick A. Stokes Company using the British printed sheets. With a preface by S. I. Hsiung, author of Lady Precious Stream.Contents: I. Introduction; II. Historical Sketch; III. Painting and Philosophy; IV. Painting and Literature; V. Inscriptions; VI. Painting Subjects; VII. The Essentials; VIII. The Instruments; IX. The Species of Painting; Index I; Index II. With 24 plates including Ma Yuan's Portrait of Confucius; Ch'ao Pu-Chih's Lao Tzu Riding on an Ox; Wang Wei's Snow Scene; Fan K'uan's Travellers; Wang Shih-Ku's After the Autumn Rain; Ch'en T'ao-Fu's Lotus; P'ien Shou-Min's Wild Geese; and others.